Posts Tagged ‘fiddler on the roof’

As weeks passed, Tevye felt more and more invincible. An inner transformation was taking place which he himself couldn’t explain, as if a new soul had entered his body. He felt like he was not only Tevye, but someonc much greater, as if the spirits of Goliath and Shmuelik, Bat Sheva and Golda, Tzeitl and Guttmacher, along with the heroes of history, had all become a part of his being. The strength of generations impelled him forward in his tasks. He was tireless in his labor. In addition to draining the swamps, he dug ditches throughout the night. When a wave of hot desert winds made work in the swamps too dangerous, he plowed fields and planted, sawed wooden planks and hammered the foundations of buildings. Unable to sleep more than a few hours a night, he did double shifts of guard duty, chased away snooping Arabs, and greeted the sunrise, wrapped in tallit and teffilin. Instead of mourning, he worked and he built. On the Sabbath, he rested, just as God had commanded. But come Motzei Shabbos, with the appearance of the first three stars in the sky, Tevye rushed back to his labor.

Busy with the endless work on the settlement, Tevye fought off moments of doubt and philosophical reflections. He knew that thinking too much could get a man into trouble. Why the Almighty did what He did was something no human could grasp. Nothing could be gained by complaining. It was God’s world to run things the way He saw fit. It was a mortal man’s duty to accept his fate in contentment and song. As Nachman always reminded them, that was man’s task and trial on earth, to trust in the Lord, in good times and bad, whether we understood God’s mysteries or not.

Which isn’t to say that Tevye turned into a saint. Many times he was angry. And often, there was more fury than joy in his work. And he was still wont to turn a questioning eye up to Heaven, and occasionally, even to sneer. But, for the most part, he kept his lips sealed. If anything, he shared a private battle with God. Like a boxer dizzy with blows, he was determined not to fall down. And if he fell down, he was determined to get back on his feet. He wouldn’t be beaten. His faith wouldn’t die. His body could ache and become food for mosquitoes, but his soul couldn’t be touched by a swamp. Where once he had been cautious, now he didn’t feel any fear. Tevye wasn’t worried about meeting the Angel of Death. “Come and take me!” he roared.

Like the Jewish People, he would live on forever. Tevye’s revenge was his work. He became an example for everyone. Summer arrived, bringing along hot, sandy winds from the desert. There were days a man couldn’t open his eyes without being blinded. While the settlers sought shelter in their tents, Tevye stood in the swamp, his eyes tightly closed, scooping buckets of water out of the swamp. The heat was scorching. There were no cool drinks to quench the nagging thirst, no ice, no shade, no air to breath in the oppressively humid lowlands. Even the ocean was warm. And nights were so still, no relief from the merciless desert sharav could be found, even by sleeping outside of their airless tents.

Still, work in the swamp continued. If not by the settlers, by the fiery rays of the sun. As if the Lord was pitching in some help of His own, the swamps began to evaporate and dry. By late August, the canal to the sea approached completion. Only a pipe-length section remained. When that last piece was set into place, the remaining swamp water would be drained off into the ocean. Only one small obstacle stood in the way. The pipe had to be laid in the most dangerous part of the swamp, where the mosquitoes had built their main encampment. Whoever connected together the last two sections was sure to be eaten alive. Descending into the nest of mosquitoes meant almost certain death. A general meeting was called which everyone had to attend. Lots were to be drawn to determine the unlucky hero.

The day after Tevye’s rescue, he stayed in bed with a chill. His face and his hands were so swollen with mosquito bites, he barely looked like himself. Feeling too queasy to eat, he sipped on tea and quinine. As if expecting the worst, visitors stopped by all the day long to pay their respects. Carmel stood guard by her husband, making sure the guests didn’t linger too long and weaken his strength. Several times, he dozed off to sleep but awoke in a sweat, gasping from the same terrifying image — the head of the heroic mule sticking out of the swamp. Fearing that the creature would appear everytime he closed his eyes, Tevye preferred not to sleep. The following evening, he mustered enough strength to sit down with guests for a holiday meal. It was the last day of Passover, and Tevye filled up his silver goblet for the traditional Kiddush. True, he had vowed to give up drinking, but Kiddush couldn’t be called drinking. The blessing over the wine was a mitzvah, and he certainly hadn’t vowed to give up any mitzvah! With relish, he gulped down the sweet, pungent wine.

Thankfully, his chill went away. The malaria which everyone feared, never developed. After all, what sense did it make to save a man from the swamp, just to have him drop dead in his tent? No, you could be sure that God had some greater destiny in store for old Tevye.

When the holiday ended, Tevye joined the other settlers back at work in the swamp. With a new fearlessness, he reached out for the buckets of swamp water. If his night in the bog hadn’t killed him, his work during the day wouldn’t either. After all, he had received enough bites to be immune from malaria for life.

The work of draining the insect-filled swamps progressed with a frustrating slowness. But as weeks went by, the settlers could see that they were winning the battle. Little by little, the water marks on the reeds sticking out of the swamp began to descend. Slowly, slowly, the water level receded. Bucket after bucket passed from hand to hand in a constant rhythmic motion. Thousands and thousands of buckets were dumped into pits in the sand. Wagons arrived filled with tall eucalyptus trees, which cost the colony as much money as they had paid to buy the land. Planted in the swamps, their roots sucked up water like hoses.

Teams of diggers toiled day and night on the canal which was to drain swamp water off to the sea. Pipes were laid in the ditches, and the stagnant, deadly, marsh water began to trickle and flow.

Just when victory seemed within reach and a spirit of hope filled their labor, tragedy struck. Tevye was passing a bucket to Esther, the carpenter’s eldest daughter, when he saw Guttmacher swoon in the middle of the swamp and fall limply into the water. Quickly, Ariel grabbed him and pulled him out of the marsh to the shore. The undertaker was shivering. His eyes were red, his face yellow with fever.

“Let’s get him into a wagon, quickly!” Tevye called.

Immediately, Ariel ran for his wagon. Tevye bent down and grasped his friend’s hand. Though it was the middle of the day, with the sun high in the sky, the undertaker’s body was shaking. Bat Sheva handed a canteen to her father. He raised it to Guttmacher’s lips, but he was too ill to drink. The water spilled over his mouth.

“Where’s my wife? Where’s my wife?” the sick man deliriously asked.

Tevye trembled, recalling the black, stormy day when they had buried Guttmacher’s wife. Sand flew into the air as Ariel arrived with the wagon. By nightfall, Tevye reasoned, they could be in Zichron Yaacov. Though only a small number of the infirmary’s patients walked out alive, there was always a chance. The workers helped Ariel lift Guttmacher onto the wagon. For a moment, his eyes seemed to clear. He clung onto Tevye’s sleeve.

“Tevye, why bother?” he asked. “Bury me here.”

“You’re not going to die,” Tevye answered. “You can’t. You’re the only undertaker we have.”

Guttmacher smiled. Then his eyes closed and he drifted off to sleep. A half hour into the journey, he regained consciousness. He gazed up at Tevye and said, “I have a brother who lives in Minsk. He can take care of my children.”

When the festival of Pesach arrived, all work on the new settlement came to a halt in order to get ready for the Passover holiday. Tents had to be searched for chametz, and matzot had to be baked. As Tevye confided to Guttmacher, at least one thing about their new life in Olat HaShachar was easier than it had been in Russia.

“What’s that?” the undertaker asked.

“Searching for chametz.”

Guttmacher laughed. It was true. Their tents hardly had any furniture. Within minutes, all pieces of leaven and bread crumbs could be swept from the house. There were no sofas to move, no cabinets and dressers to clean, nor kitchens to scrub. But just the same, since the Master of the Universe had commanded them to remove all traces of leaven from the house during the seven day Passover holiday, they searched diligently just as Jews had been doing since the exodus from Egypt three-thousand years before. Tevye got down on his knees with a candle and feather to peer under the folds of the tent for crumbs. And sure enough, his love for the mitzvah was quickly rewarded. He didn’t find any traces of cake or bread, but he did find two curly-tailed scorpions whose sting was known to be deadly.

When it came to baking the matzot, the industrious scene could have passed for Anatevka. A special oven for baking the thin unleavened bread was made out of brick. Water from a nearby well had been stored overnight so that it would be cool at the time of the kneading, to be sure that the flour wouldn’t leaven. When the baking began, the men pounded the flour paste on top of tables and kneaded it without stopping until each batch of dough was ready. Once the flour and water were mixed, and the dough was flattened and slid into the oven, if more than eighteen minutes had passed, it had to be burned or fed to the animals before the holiday in fear that it had already leavened. Nachman was given the honor of separating the priest’s due, or challah, a mitzvah which was done only in Eretz Yisrael. Tevye, who was in charge of the kneading, made sure his workers kept shouting out, “L’sham matzah mitzvah-for the sake of the commandment of matzah.” By the middle of the frantic baking, everyone was sweating. The workers burst out in a spontaneous song.

“Just as God gathered us out from Egypt, he will gather us from the four corners of the earth!”

Surely, a Turkish passerby would have thought the Jews were crazy. What normal man became so ecstatic about baking such poor-looking bread? No outsider could ever understand the great secret of their joy. The joy of doing God’s will. The joy in knowing that the words which they were singing were sure to come true.

Shimon wanted the pioneer chalutzim to keep working during the intermediary days of the seven-day holiday. He maintained the commandment of settling the Land of Israel took pecedence the prohibition of working on Chol HaMoed, the intermediary days of the holiday, if the work was vital to the success of the yishuv. Of course, this ruling brought groans from the settlers, who were tired of the swamps, the ditch digging, and the planting of eucalyptus trees. Pesach was Pesach. In Russia, they hadn’t worked during the seven-day holiday. Why should they here? Nachman was prepared to side with Shimon, reasoning that the work of draining the swamps could save lives, and this justified working on the festival.

“Going into the swamps is what kills people,” Tevye argued, “not staying out of them.”

While his point was well-taken, it wasn’t completely correct. Dozens of settlers had fallen victim to yellow fever and malaria without actually descending into the swamps. Since the Morasha settlers had arrived, the swamps had claimed two further victims among the “Lovers of Zion.” A father and son who were working in the fields near the marshes at the other side of the settlement had come down with the fever and died. The disease-carrying mosquitoes could fly wherever they wished, making the whole vicinity a hazard. But since the overwhelming majority of settlers were in favor of rest, a vacation from work was declared. The mosquitoes could wait. Passover was the festival of freedom, and people were happy for a chance to forget about the dangerous labor of draining the swamps.

One late afternoon when Tevye returned to his tent after a back-breaking day in the winery, a letter was waiting from Baylke. Sure enough, she had been in touch with Golda’s distant cousin in Chicago, and he had forwarded Tevye’s letter to her in New York. She had been thrilled to hear from her family, and hoped that more letters were in the mail. She wrote that the news of their safe arrival in Palestine had quieted a nagging fear in her heart that perhaps, like so many others, they had been caught in the bloody persecutions in Russia. She was happy for them, but when she read about her big sister’s death, she had fallen into a week-long depression. The blades of grass from the Land of Israel which her father had stuffed into the envelope had brought tears to her eyes. She reported that neighbors came by their flat throughout the day to see the holy blades and to hold them in their hands. Though the letter had taken months to arrive, Baylke said that the grass had remained a deep shade of green. “A miracle!” a friend of hers had exclaimed in the sweater factory where she worked.

Baylke wrote that they were doing wonderfully. At first, they had shared a flat with another family, but now they had their own large apartment. Her husband, Pedhotzer, had found work in a bank, and it hadn’t taken long before the management had recognized his outstanding business savvy and talents. He was now a manager in the loan department, and as soon as he mastered English, Baylke was sure that he would be promoted to an even higher position. Of course, his goal was to start a business of his own, and his work at the bank was only temporary in order to learn the ins-and-outs of American enterprise.

America, she confirmed, was truly a land of gold and fortune. Though dollars didn’t grow on trees, with hard work a man could become a millionaire. They had met people who had arrived in New York with nothing, and who now owned Manhattan hotels, theaters, dress factories, and jewelry stores on Fifth Avenue. It wouldn’t be long, she wrote, until they had a luxurious apartment of their own, but in the meantime, they had an extra room in their Essex Street flat, and she wanted her family to come.

The city of New York, Baylke wrote, was like a dream. Its buildings reached up to heaven. Kings and queens walked the streets. Cafes, restaurants, and nightclubs never closed. Stores were filled with treasures from all over the world. Everyone could own his own automobile. And a Jew didn’t have to live in a ghetto. He could be an American, like everyone else.

“That’s the end of the Jews in America,” Tevye said wryly.

“It sounds wonderful to me,” Bat Sheva argued. “Why does a Jew always have to be different? If we were like everyone else, the gentiles would stop hating us.”

“The gentiles will stop hating us when men will walk on the moon,” her father responded.

“That’s ridiculous,” Bat Sheva answered. “Men will never walk on the moon.”

“Neither will the goyim stop hating us.”

“Then again,” Tevye thought out loud, the very next day, as he was shlepping barrels of wine on his back like a donkey, “where is it written that Tevye has to be a poor shlemiel all of his life. If I had a million dollars like all of the Jews in New York, I could study, give charity, and do a long list of good deeds. I could become a great man like the Baron himself! After all, if the Almighty wanted a man to work like a mule all his life, He would have graced him with another two legs.”

Tevye carried the barrel on his shoulder from the warehouse to a wagon outside. With a groan, he let the great weight slide off his neck and roll onto the planks of the wagon. Walking back to the warehouse, he could barely stand straight. Why bother? He would only have to stoop over again to lift another barrel onto his back. But if he were in New York, there he could be a wealthy importer of wines, or the owner of a fancy restaurant, or the manager of one of his son-in-law’s hotels. True, Pedhotzer was a swine of a person, but for the sake of the family, Tevye could pretend to get along. He would move in with his daughter until he could get started on his own. With a little luck and hard work, it wouldn’t be long before Tevye could afford a mansion like everyone else.

Almost at the same time that Tevye was immersing little Moishe in the mystical mikvah in Safed, Hevedke Galagan was immersing himself in a mikvah in Jaffa as part of his conversion to Judaism. Afterward, a special brit milah circumcision was performed, and the blond Russian youth entered into the covenant between God and the Jewish People. His new Hebrew name was Yitzhak ben Avraham, a name chosen for its Biblical significance, and for its similarity to the name of the Chief Rabbi of Jaffa, HaRav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, who the new Issac so greatly admired.

Issac’s studies had progressed remarkably quickly. He learned to speak Hebrew more fluently than Tevye, and with much less of a Russian accent. In addition, he had learned to read Aramaic and had already completed one tractate of the Talmud. Naturally, having only just started, he was behind everyone else, but with his characteristic long strides, he labored diligently to catch up. Jokingly, his friends called him Akiva, after the famous uneducated shepherd who had matured after decades of study into Israel’s greatest teacher of Torah.

Now and again, Issac had taken time from his busy learning schedule to write Hava a letter, but, true to his promise, he had not seen her in over a year. That had been the terms of his bargain with Tevye, and he had been stringent about keeping his end of the deal. But now, finally, the time had come to make their marriage kosher.

“If she will still have me,” he thought.

True, now he was Jewish, and that was a mountain out of the way, but he was no longer the same glib, outspoken poet who had mezmerized her in the sleepy village of Anatevka. The Torah had changed him. Discovering the unending depths of its wisdom, his own eclectic understandings had been exposed as superficial and false. All other religions were the inventions of man, whilst the Torah was given to the Jewish People by God. His former religious views and his vilification of Judaism filled the depths of his being with shame. When he realized how the New Testament had turned mankind away from the pure faith of the Torah, he understood why Tevye had banned his daughter from the house for having eloped with a stranger to their faith.

His day and night learning of the Talmud, and the thick volumes of Jewish law, had taught him that truth was more than platitudes. God’s will for man extended to every facet of life, to every thought and deed. Believing in a faraway deity wasn’t enough. A servant of God had to obey all of the orders of the King. But Hevedke didn’t look on the Torah’s commandments as an obligation or yoke. He embraced them with indescribable joy.

Recognizing the grandeur of his Creator, Hevedke’s boyhood bravado became a thing of the past. The yeshiva was like a fiery kiln, searing his pride, refining his coarse edges, and making him humble. Even his posture had changed. Instead of his once tall, upright swagger, the new Issac walked slightly bent over, with his head toward the ground, in constant awe of his Maker.

In a way, when Hava finally saw him after over a year, it was like meeting an entirely new person. From his letters, she knew that he was engrossed in his studies, but she never dreamed that it would cause such a change in his bearing. If he had not written her that he was coming to Zichron Yaaeov to marry her, she would not have recognized him when she saw him on the street. For one thing, he wore a hat. Not a fur shtreimel like Rabbi Kook, nor the cap of kibbutz worker, but a black fedora from Italy, like the hats worn by Jewish businessmen in Europe. Instead of his high Russian boots, he wore shoes, and instead of his casual suede jacket, he wore a simple black overcoat. But the biggest changes were his spectacles and his beard. Together they hid his youthful good looks. Long evenings of candlelight study, squinting at the flamelike Hebrew letters, had made eyeglasses a must. Though he needed them only for reading, he wore them the first time they met. And his reddish blond beard covered his cheekbones completely, taking away his Slavic appearance, and making him look like a Jew.

What was a man, Tevye thought, that one moment he could be so filled with power and seemingly invincible force, and the next moment a motionless pile of flesh? He knew that the body on the ground wasn’t the real Goliath, but only the oversized suit which his giant soul had worn during his wanderings on earth. The real Goliath was on his way to Heaven and a world where size was measured in good deeds and Torah, not in physical power and strength. That’s what the Rabbis taught, and who was Tevye to disagree? The mysteries and secrets of life were beyond his understanding, but he was certain that the lifeless imposter before him wasn’t Goliath. His faithful companion couldn’t be gone. The Divine energy called life didn’t just disappear. Goliath simply had slipped out of his bulky lumberjack’s costume to journey to a less cumbersome world.

“Blessed be the true Judge,” a voice said.

It was Nachman.

“When will it end?” Tevye asked.

Nachman could only shake his head as he gazed down at his lifelong friend.

“I told him not to sleep in the barn. Like always, he worried about everyone else without thinking about himself.”

Nachman turned away and held on to Tevye.

“He was like a brother and father to me.”

Tevye let his son-in-law silently weep in his arms. He remembered how the giant had watched over Nachman, like a mother hen guarding its chick.

“He’s in a better world now,” Tevye observed.

Nachman nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I know,” he said. “I know. But he was such a good friend.”

Tevye himself felt like crying, but he had to stay strong for the boy. Death had robbed him of his best friends from the past, and he needed someone to remind him that for a Jew, life always had a happier future. That was the steadfast belief which had kept his People going for the last two thousand years, throughout endless persecutions and wanderings.

“Everything God does is always for the best, even if we can’t

understand,” Tevye told him. “Do you remember on the boat to

Israel, when they turned us away from landing, you had to remind me that everything turns out for our good?”

“I remember,” Nachman replied.

“Someday, when we gaze down from Heaven, we will understand these great secrets. But right now, you had better call Guttmacher,” Tevye said.

Nachman nodded. He walked out of the barn to fetch the undertaker, leaving Tevye alone with the toppled Goliath. “Alexander, the son of Rivka,” Tevye said, saying a prayer for the departed man’s soul. Tevye bent down and closed Goliath’s eyes. When he stood up, a rooster leaped onto the dead man’s chest and perched there like a vulture. Tevye shouted and kicked at the bird. Squawking, it flew into the air. Angrily, Tevye raced around the barn, scaring the chickens away. For Nachman’s sake, he had spoken strengthening words of faith. But alone with the very great loss, he succumbed to the more mortal feelings of anger and pain.

“Is this fair?” he called out toward the roof of the barn. “What did Goliath ever do to hurt a flea in his life? Is this the end he deserves – to drop dead amongst the cows and the chickens?!”

The roof didn’t answer. Neither did the animals. They were silent, hushed by Tevye’s outburst.

“If Your judgment has to fall on someone, then leave the others alone. Let it all fall on me!”

Sighing, Tevye lowered his arm. He bent down and grabbed Goliath’s boots, thinking to drag the corpse out of the disease-ridden barn. As he gave the great hulk a tug, he heard a vertebra pop out of place in his spine. Tevye cried out in pain. Bent over double, he staggered to the door of the barn, shuffling his feet on the ground like a hunchback. Leaning against the barn wall, he looked up at Heaven and groaned.

“Okay,” he said, clutching his aching back. “You win. I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth.”

Needless to say, the Baron Rothschild never showed up. For the time being, Hodel and her baby, Ben Zion, moved into Ruchel’s cottage. The newcomers shared the curtained-off corner with Bat Sheva, Moishe, and Hannei. Goliath went to work cutting planks in order to add on another room to the house. Tevye told Nachman that he hoped the arrangement would be temporary. He confessed that he had a secret plan to interest Shmuelik in his daughter, Hodel. Of course, as long as Hodel was still Perchik’s wife, remarrying was out of the question, but if her rotten husband didn’t show up in a hurry with a promise to repent in his ways, Tevye was determined to demand a divorce.

Nachman didn’t complain about the overcrowded cottage, nor about the hard work, nor about having had to give up his job as a teacher. Even when his soft scholar’s hand turned calloused with blisters, he didn’t regret his decision to leave Rishon Le Zion for the remote and windy Morasha hillside.

“Blisters of redemption,” he called them.

“My tzaddik of a son-in-law,” Tevye called him.

While Tevye’s faith was as deep as any man’s, he wasn’t ashamed to complain now and again about injustices he saw in the world, especially when they were directed against him. But Nachman would never dream of such an irreverence. He turned everything into a mitzvah in the supreme commanment to settle the Holy Land. Guarding the yishuv in the middle of the night was a mitzvah. Walking two hours for a bucket of water was a mitzvah. And the back-breaking work in the fields was a mitzvah too. Why should his overcrowded cottage disturb him? Often, he let his sister-in-law, Hodel, sleep in his very own bed! He preferred sleeping outside under the stars just like his great forefather, Jacob.

Even when Nachman had to give up his morning learning to labor in the fields alongside the Arabs when a settler was sick, he didn’t complain. How else were the Jewish People to be redeemed from exile in foreign places if not through the strenuous work of rebuilding their own land? The Almighty was ready to do His part, but they had to do theirs. The Jews had to prove that they wanted the Land of Israel more than anything else in the world. A long time ago, their ancestors had abused the privilege of living in the land of milk and honey, and so, in punishment, God had taken it away and scattered them amongst the gentiles. Now that the Almighty was leading them back to the land of their forefathers, the Jews had to prove that they had learned their lesson.

As Shmuelik said, “What was better? Suffering in exile for

whatever crumbs a Jew could gather, or suffering for your own dearly loved soil?”

During his first year in the Holy Land, Tevye was more of a pragmatist. True, he had lived like a dog all of his life in Russia, but not every Jew lived off crumbs. The Baron Rothschild, for instance, with all of his billions, could hardly be said to be suffering.

“How do you know what headaches he has?” Shmuelik asked. “Haven’t our Sages taught us, ‘The more possessions, the more worries; the more money, the more thieves?’”

“That’s true,” Tevye admitted. “But all the same, I would be willing to change places with the Baron and worry about his railroads and yachts, while he sits here and tends to my cows.”

“Not me,” Shmuelik answered. “I would much rather have a wagon and mule in the Land of Israel than all of the railroads in France.”

The wonderful thing was that Shmuelik truly believed what he said. His optimism was a pillar of strength not only to Tevye, but to everyone in the settlement. If anyone had a personal problem, they would seek out Shmuelik’s advice, even though he was still a young man, If it were a matter of Jewish law, Nachman, the more serious scholar, was the person to ask. But if you needed someone to listen, then the good-natured Shmuelik was the address. And when people weren’t coming to him, he was going to them, always seeking to help others and to lend a neighborly hand.